Today
by viva los angeles
Summary: Betty wakes up four months after Henry left to find that while some things are sure, some are destined for change. Pure fluff. HxB.


**A/N: this is the product of a night of insomnia. At least someone's benefiting from my lack of sleep… yawn, because I certainly am not. But I did request three of my favorite songs on the radio and hopefully I'll hear them.**

**We all know I know nothing about New York. So leave me alone. And yes, I made up the word "non-hers" for effect. So shut up.**

**Lots of artistic license here. This isn't something I'd truly put past our favorite couple, but I can hardly see it actually happening.**

**And, uh, this picks up four months after Henrykins leaves.**

**Thanks to all the girls at IC for being, I don't know, so damn awesome, and tolerating my ridiculous amounts of baseball jabber :)**

**And thanks to Rascal Flatts for releasing a new single and giving me something to stay awake about. It sure is a beautiful song. Take me there, boys!**

--

_Today_

--

Today is the day.

Henry straightens his argyle sweater vest and tightens the knot in his tie, watching himself carefully in the mirror as he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

_Today is the day_, he tells himself in his head.

He takes the foam-core board from its spot by the door and inspects the stenciled writing. _Perfect_, he thinks as he brushes off a hardly-noticeable speck of dust from the surface.

"Today… is the day," he reminds himself with a smile.

Gripping the doorknob tightly, he closes the door behind him. It's about six in the morning, and last time he left this early, the old lady next door yelled at him and beat him with her purse, an experience he wouldn't care to repeat.

Foam-core in tow, he heads down the empty elevator to the lobby, where he exits through the revolving door and walks down the street to the subway station. Swiping his MetroCard, he waits patiently for his F train to arrive.

There are no empty seats in the car when he steps in. That's okay with him—he can stand. Clutching his foam-core to him with his right hand, he clings to the handrail with the left as the train lurches to life and rumbles down the tracks. Many of the passengers stare at him as he smiles broadly when there really doesn't appear to be anything to smile about. _Of course_, he thinks, _they're all doomed to a mundane business day today_.

_But today is _my_ day_, he reminds himself again, and grins at the boring people in suits.

Because today _is_ his day, he will not allow anything to get him down. Thoughts fly through his mind at illegal amounts of miles per hour, and not even those that mention Betty can depress him, and he simply lets them drive on through his consciousness as he admires his foam-core.

Somewhere around six-thirty, the train slows at his stop, and he exits the train. A few escalators take him to the surface of the world, and he breathes deeply as he departs the comfort of what he knows concretely to the novelty of that which he has only imagined.

-----

Betty stares at the clock in disbelief. Seven o'clock… shouldn't that mean something to her? Gosh, it seems like something important should be happening right now.

Oh yeah, she remembers. She ought to be getting ready for work.

So she slams her glasses on her face and drags herself out of bed and into the bathroom, where she washes her face and carefully pulls the rollers from her hair, letting the soft waves settle in.

_Today will not be my day_, she sighs, somehow rather confident in that fact.

Of course, none of the days since Henry left have really been _hers_. It's almost as if he took all the days and packed them into his suitcase, removing them from ever being in her possession again.

Not a day goes by when she doesn't think of him, mentally slap herself, and pretend that she can actually move on. The same sequence even repeats itself several times a day.

So today, as the rest of her days have lately been, is rather non-hers.

She pulls on something from her closet—her capacity to pay attention to her clothing has long diminished, because no one looks at her anymore. She's not stupid. She hasn't forgotten that look that Henry always seemed to have for her whenever she most needed it, and without that look, she's not going to bother with fashion, so her outfits match even less than they ever did.

In her mind she can see his face, his eyes focused on her as if she were the only thing in the world worth his stare. She used to believe she was.

Whatever.

Clearly, she reminds herself as she tugs on her shoes, she was mistaken.

About forty-five minutes after she woke, she trudges downstairs to catch some breakfast and maybe a glass of orange juice. Maybe being the operative word, because as she opens the refrigerator, her desires are smashed by the terrible lack of citrus.

So she pours herself a bowl of the budget cereal of the week (Fake-o Flakes, stupid Frosted Flakes knockoff with only half the "Frosted" and too much "Flakes") and some milk on top of the stuff and grabs a spoon from the designated drawer.

The cereal disappears slowly as she watches the morning news. At eight o'clock, she listens as the announcer tells her what exactly was happening in Studio 1A in Rockefeller Plaza. And one minute later, something flashes in front of her eyes that she could not be possibly be sure she had just seen. So she turns the volume up, dropping her spoon with a splash of milk.

------

Henry stands up against the metal railing, holding that piece of foam-core in front of it with one hand, smiling and waving with the other as a cameraman and one of the news anchors approaches him.

"That's an interesting sign you've got there," the anchor observes with a smile.

Henry looks down and smiles. "Yes, sir."

"Who is Betty?" the anchor asks.

Henry laughs bashfully. "Oh, sir, I don't think I could reasonably be expected to describe her in the three hours you're on the air."

"She must be very special," the anchor decides.

"Oh, sir," Henry responds, "you cannot possibly even begin to imagine."

------

Betty's mouth is hanging open in a rather unflattering manner when Hilda enters the kitchen.

"What are you…?" Hilda asks, before Betty cuts her off.

"Shut up!" And she points to the screen.

"Oh my God," Hilda agrees.

"I've got to go," Betty finally says, throwing her arms up and leaving her bowl on the table. Sticking her arm through the handle of her purse, she takes off out the door and doesn't even bother to close it.

She usually takes the D train down to Meade Publications, but today, she's going to Rockefeller Plaza.

------

Henry feels a tap on his left shoulder and turns around, holding his sign up against the railing with his right hand.

"Betty!" he exclaims, as she smiles brightly.

"Oh, Henry, I've missed you so much," she replies. "But Charlie… the baby?"

Henry sighs, but is still unable to stop smiling. "The baby didn't exist. It was simply a way to get me back with her. And then when she let it slip that she'd been sleeping with Farkas, well, I couldn't very well stay in Tucson, could I? So I caught a red-eye a week and a half ago, signed a contract for a six-month lease in an apartment, and showed up here at six-thirty. I knew you watched _Today_ every morning, and I thought this would be a bit more romantic than just showing up on your doorstep."

"After four months without you, I really would have taken anything I could get from you," she laughed in response, pushing away her desire for details until later. "I had to elbow my way through the crowd to get to you."

"Well, this is what you get," Henry replies, holding up the sign, as the same anchor comes back.

"Is this Betty?" the anchor asks.

"Yes, sir," Henry replies.

"This man seems to be very much in love with you, Betty," the anchor grins.

"Oh, sir, and I am so much in love with him."

They both wave to the camera and Henry hands Betty the sign.

"I woke up thinking today would not be my day," she smiles. "How wrong I was."

And anyone who happened to be watching NBC sometime around eight-thirty Eastern Time was treated to an image of a foam-core poster that proudly declared that "Betty, today is our day".

Fortunately, they delay their kissing until the camera is safely away from them.

---

**Afterthoughts: for some reason, Henry did not lend himself to easy writing this time. And this story was fun to write, but very short on meaning or characterization or, truthfully, anything that makes sense at all. The gaps in the story and the character and, agh, the whole entire thing terrify me. But it's 1:15 AM and I'm exhausted. My apologies for my lack of creativity as concerns the title. Thank God for pure fluffy-fluff (and good directions and turnip greens).**


End file.
